Hockey Australia implosion continues

News Corp has seen a letter from Hockey WA president Michael Henderson calling for HA president Melanie Woosnam to stand.

Kookaburras players celebrate silver at the Oi Hockey Stadium in Tokyo Picture: Adam Head

The Tokyo Games have come and gone but Hockey Australia is still ripping itself apart.

News Corp has been sent a three-page letter from Hockey Western Australia president Michael Henderson to the HA Board, calling for president Melanie Woosnam to stand down immediately.

News Corp understands HA will have a board meeting on Friday, where Hockey WA hopes Woosnam will stand down – a position she has already told stakeholders she will depart later in the year.

“The president of Hockey Australia has, therefore, lost the confidence of Hockey WA and should resign the position immediately,” the letter reads.

The leaked email comes just days after News Corp revealed the future of Australia’s national hockey program in Perth was under review.

In an exclusive interview with News Corp following the Kookaburras’ silver medal in Tokyo, Woosnam revealed she planned to stand down from her role in November.

She also said the post-Tokyo Olympics review would consider whether the national hockey program should remain in Perth beyond 2024, where it has been based for years.

“That’s something we’re reviewing as part of our post-Olympic review as well,” Woosnam said.

“People will make it all about location but, for us, it’s about what does world class look like?

“It’s actually more than the location, it’s the facilities, it’s the environment, career opportunities, support for the athletes, and 95 per cent of the cohort probably come from the east coast, so to have our program based on the west coast, is that the best thing for the program moving forward?

“Do we need to have the same program for men and women?

“Certainly something that came up recently in the Hockeyroos review is that we’re taking young girls out of their home environment and basing them on the other side of the country. Is that providing the best and most conducive environment for them to perform?”

Currently, about one-fifth of the squad comes from Western Australia, including Penny Squibb, Aleisha Power, Georgia Wilson, Karrie Somerville while Kaitlin Nobbs grew up in WA but played for NSW after relocating aged 14.

In the Kookaburras, captain Aran Zalewski, Jake Harvie, Trent Mitton and Tyler Lovell are from WA.

HA, who will soon start the search for a new CEO following Matt Favier’s resignation last week as well as a high-performance director, maintains no decision has been made yet on the future of the program.

It comes as HA attempt to hose down speculation the program could move from Perth once current deals with WA Hockey, Sport and Recreation WA and Curtin University finish in 2024.

But with HA’s head office in Melbourne, it is understood there is a push to bring at least one of the hockey programs to Victoria while Queensland is also hoping to have one of the national teams in the Sunshine State ahead of the 2032 Olympics.

Victoria last month unveiled their $64.4 million investment into the Melbourne Sports Centres, which includes a new indoor hockey pitch, which they are hoping to make the home of hockey in Australia.

The Queensland Academy of Sport is constructing a new $9.8 million gym.

The leaked email also claims News Corp’s recent report adds weight to past conversations.

“This reinforces recent statements to the president and CEO of Hockey WA by the president of Queensland Hockey where he stated that ‘Hockey WA does not own the hockey high-performance’ and that ‘Mel (Woosnam) and I are working with the Queensland government to shift the high-performance programs to Queensland’,” the letter says.

The politics at play come less than a year after HA reluctantly conducted a review into the Hockeyroos program, where a strike was threatened after leading players were inexplicably left out of the national squad. A legal case later overturned the decision to drop Rachael Lynch and Georgie Morgan from the squad, while only the former was reinstated.

The review later made 29 recommendations, which have not been made public, but claimed the Hockeyroos culture was “dysfunctional”.

It led to a domino effect of management resigning, including high-performance director Toni Cumspton, coach Paul Gaudoin and later Favier.

Henderson believes an entire clean-out is required.

“Hockey Australia is really deficient and it needs to change,” he said.

“The majority of employees with Hockey Australia are based in Western Australia and yet we’re in this bizarre position where the administration is based in Victoria. The hypocritical thing about it is that we’ve had a failure in our management, e.g. Toni Cumpston based in Melbourne and the high-performance in Perth, it’s actually the other way around, it’s the tail wagging the dog.

“It should be that the administration, with the CEO, with the high-performance lead, is based in Western Australia.

“The Hockeyroos, there were four reviews, three of them that were overlooked by Mel the president and she stood have stepped in and whether she or whether the CEO did it’s still her responsibility to have done something.”

Henderson, who was recently selected as a finalist for the Western Australian of the Year Awards, believes the program should remain in Perth because it is the strongest club competition in Australia, its history of success and leading sponsorship agreements are with West Australian companies.